A recent report published on MarketingProfs, LinkedIn Use by Professionals in Industrial Sector Surges, shows that the use of LinkedIn among engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals continues to rise; and sites that keeping up to date with the latest business and product news and technologies is the most popular use of social networking within the tech/industrial sectors.

Thank you for all of your support, conversation, engagement and interest in PerkettPR in the past year. As we close out a truly memorable year, we’re very excited to kick off 2010 with a bang … but we need your help!

Some of the PerkettPR crew at December’s holiday party

Because of you, our amazing community, we’ve been voted a finalist in the list for “Best Tech PR” from TechCrunch’s “The Crunchie’s Awards.”Thank you for voting us to the finalist list! Now, our friends, family, clients, prospects and partners can vote once per day until January 6 to help us win this prestigious award. Think of it as the tech industry’s own Oscars! Winners are announced during the Crunchies award ceremony in San Francisco on the 8th of January 2010. For more information, visit the Crunchies homepage.

Today PerkettPR is announcing a major milestone for our company – our 10th year of business! What makes this interesting though, isn’t just the years, but the resilience of the virtual model that our company was built on and that we continue to embrace – while companies and their employees are just starting to get comfortable with the idea of virtual working, PerkettPR has been pioneering the concept since 1998. Only recently, have other companies been warming to the idea of letting their business professionals work from home as marked by the recent articles in major publications touting the “new” concept that a central geographic location is becoming less of a necessity for the modern day web worker. But PerkettPR was built from the ground up with an all-senior team that physically spans both coasts and all regions in-between; with almost 30 employees located across nine states, we continue to thrive as a virtually operated company.

Our 10th year is beginning on the heels of our most successful year to date – 2007 was an extreme growth year for PerkettPR with an expanding client roster and a 50% increase in staff and revenue. We have added several new clients worldwide including companies in Web 2.0, healthcare, enterprise software and telecom markets spanning Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. – including businesses such as Aternity, Constant Contact, Mailtrust, Sosius and Mzinga and we have enhanced our Partner Program with marketing and design agencies, Internet technology experts, and international PR firms.

In addition, although we have always been first adopters of technology and concepts that will help us to more successful in working virtually, 2007 has been the year that we have truly embraced social media initiatives for both ourselves and for our clients. Jeremiah Owyang recently stated, “I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media. But with the power shifting to the participants, agencies must demonstrate they can participate before they can ever help clients with it.”

PerkettPR truly believes in this concept and agree with Jeremiah that “the agency of the future is a “connected” one.” We have taught ourselves first, and then helped our clients to engage at many level. In the past year and a half, we have made additions such as the agency’s corporate blog, PerkettPRsuasion, a corporate Twitter presence, @PerkettPR and Facebook group – to join and start engaging influencers in more meaningful conversations for the firm and its clients. We have also driven new media and viral campaign elements for clients including blogging, screencasting, viral videos, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn campaigns, interactive video channels and more.

We believe strongly in making sure we feel comfortable in the space so that we can help our clients – we even hired a Social Media Director, Jeff Glasson that works with our clients with how to participate in social networking and he comments on social media topics on our blog and on others.

PerkettPR has also embraced the social media and the tech communities by sponsoring several TechCrunch events in New York and San Francisco, and most recently, the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp where the agency executed the planning, promotion and sponsorship coordination – bringing arguably the hottest Web 2.0 networking event to Boston for the first time ever. PerkettPR also has worked closely with other new media thought leaders, such as Sarah Meyers at Pop17.

Our team is very proud about this milestone and the steps we have taken to not only be a “poster child” for the successful virtual model, but also for our leadership in social media initiatives for ourselves and our clients.

We admit, Twitter is difficult to understand from an outsider’s perspective. You really need to participate in the community to understand its value. But once you do engage, the power of this eclectic community comes shining through.

Several of us at PerkettPR have personal Twitter accounts and we also have a corporate entity where we share news, poll the community, post blog entries, track events and more. Twitter has become a fantastic resource for our firm professionally and for many of us, personally. So what have we gleamed from Twitter? Everything from tips on restaurants, travel services, books, technology and more, to new relationships across the globe – including many with like-minded PR professionals – who we’ll call “Frenemies.”

Although we continue to compete for business with many of our Frenemies, we have also united with them in a way we never would have before Twitter. It has provided us the opportunity to see each other beyond the walls of the firms we work for – to appreciate our industry colleagues’ writing, strategies and accomplishments, and even to commiserate over similar struggles.

Through Twitter, we’ve had the opportunity to build relationships like never before – not only with other PR and social media professionals, but reporters, bloggers, analysts and others in relevant – and sometimes not-at-all-relevant – industries. Without Twitter, Jeremiah Owyang and Guy Kawasaki might never have chatted with us about various topics – professional and personal – much less visited and mentioned our blog and our website.

Participating in debates about the debates, rallying around a community member fighting breast cancer, supporting the case of a missing child, and even an unexpected death in the community have all been part of our various experiences on Twitter in the last few months alone. We share lively business-related discussions within the community that often extend to each other’s blogs – sharing ideas, “joining together” on issues such as “the death of PR,” the value of social media or something more personal such as parenting woes.

Twitter has not only helped us to extend our network and knowledge significantly, but provided us with a new avenue to prove that PR executives do have substance and can participate in industry conversations. We have also learned that we have more in common with our competitors than we ever thought possible. They are human, they are smart and we can learn from them. We embrace them as our “frenemies” because we still need to compete – which makes for another interesting future blog post …

The relationships may begin on Twitter – but they don’t end there. We have followed up and met face-to-face with “Followers” from “Twitterverse” at various industry events. Twitter is a great opportunity to expand not only your contacts database but your view of the world. Log on, join the community – we bet you’ll learn something new immediately.

Crunchies or Crashies, call them what you like..either way call it an entertaining evening in San Francisco on Friday.

Attending the Crunchies was a great way to end a very busy work week. Upon arriving at the Herbst Theatre it was clear the bubble was back in full effect (or on its way to bursting, according to the usual cynics and of course the Richter Scales). Though the exuberance was rational, there were some flash signs of the days of old, the folks from Tesla Motors had one of their super-spendy electric cars parked out in front of theatre (who said you had to sacrifice sophistication to go green?) and there were massive search lights attracting passers-by and pointing them in the right direction to tech party fun. The camera crews from the local broadcast stations and video bloggers like PopSnap’s Sarah Myers were circling Michael Arrington, and others, to get some good pre-awards ceremony sound bytes and, of course, the usual party crashers were there too.

As with other TechCrunch events, the place was filled with overly enthusiastic students and bloggers, budding entrepreneurs and established CEOs, as well as the marketing and PR folks like us doing their best to network while juggling flashing mobile devices, handshakes and a drink, pre-ceremony. All of us were in the same boat with our thoughts though, hoping to see our company or client take home one of the coveted Crunchie monkey statues, or, at the very least, be entertained on a Friday night — and that we were. Check out this hilarious (though somewhat vulgar) acceptance speech video from the fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons). Apparently no one from Apple was available to attend the ceremony and accept the award so the Crunchies had a great laugh at their expense, and so did the rest of us! Also check out the Cool Whip response from Twine in the first set of video interviews section — very funny guy. The Richter Scales also had us laughing with their catchy tech party song, Here Comes Another Bubble.

Arrington along with Om Malik (who courageously still made it on stage 15 days post heart surgery), Matt Marshall and Richard MacManus were all gracious hosts and entertaining presenters. The event flowed just as well as any other first-year awards ceremony, with a few hiccups, that Arrington was the first to point out and remedy, (like never, ever leaving the stage empty), and the unscripted “Blogger Bash” panel, moderated byDan Farber, that was a bit rushed. All in all, that the event was a great success for the four blogs that hosted, all the companies that were nominated, and for those that won the coveted, crazy monkey “Crunchie.” And for the rest of us, the night was a chance to celebrate what a cool and crazy year in tech it has been. It was great to see the tremendous amount of activity that has happened in tech this year culminate in one nicely put together event. Congratulations to all the winners, and look forward to seeing you all at the next big valley celebration sometime soon.

Thanks to Mike, Om, Matt, and Richard for hosting all of us tech geeks and reminding us what a great ride it’s been –so far (I mean the second time) ☺!